text4baby

Text4Baby: 30% worse than I thought

I posted recently about the Text4Baby program to allow moms-to-be to receive text messages during pregnancy.  I pointed out that despite glowing reports from the New York Times and Time, T4B had only reached about 3% of its target population:

Text4Baby After One Year: Low Penetration, Slowing Signups

Almost a year ago, I blogged about the Text4baby sms service launched to much fanfare by the US government (including HHS and the White House) along with a consortium of carriers and industry.  As I noted, initial results weren't great in terms of reaching the target audience of pregnant women:

they have only managed to sign up 22,327 moms in 6 weeks.  That means that so far they've covered about 0.5% of the approximately 4.3 million births per year in the US

When the Government Does Technology, part II

Last month I noted the launch of the Text4Baby SMS service to educate moms and moms-to-be with skepticism:

As a pediatrician I am pretty strongly committed to the health of moms and babies, but to me this program is exactly what we don't need: an million-dollar custom-built system to send text messages on one particular topic.

When the Government Does Technology

So the U.S. Chief Technology Officer today announced a "free mobile health service for pregnant women and new mothers."  The system, text4baby, allows moms to receive text messages about baby health on their phones.